


Only the Good Die Old

by smithsonianstucky (thelarenttrap)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Ending, Blood, Canon Divergence - Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Spoilers, Character Death, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Violence, Vomit, honestly this is horrifically graphic, probably the worst thing i've ever written in that regard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-16
Updated: 2016-06-16
Packaged: 2018-07-15 09:02:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7216138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelarenttrap/pseuds/smithsonianstucky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky and Steve are quite literally with each other til the end of the line.</p><p>(A self indulgent piece from a person who loves to suffer. Based off events in CA:CW)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Only the Good Die Old

**Author's Note:**

> The first 500 words are summarizing the scene before the canon divergence so it might seem a little dull for a moment as I assume you know what happens. Bear with the story and please heed the archive warnings and read the tags!
> 
> 9/4/16 Edit: I refer to this as "the mutual death fic" so there is another warning for y'all

Steve felt the exact moment that the danger became real. Yes, Zemo had a twisted mind and a plan that—on paper—could succeed, but the real danger entered the Siberian base as Tony watched thirty-year-old footage of the Winter Soldier strangling his mother.

Steve was ready when Tony lunged towards Bucky, prepared to talk the man down from the turmoil Steve knew he was experiencing.

“Tony, Tony,” Steve reasoned as he held Iron Man back.

He slowly turned towards Captain America, a range of emotions crossing his futures before his eyes focused directly on Steve’s. “Did you know?”

“I didn’t know it was him,” Steve lied, but he knew Tony would see through it.

“Don’t shit me Rogers, did you know?” Tony spat, anger bringing tension to his face.

Steve studied Tony’s features, recognizing what he was initiating with the truth about to leave his lips. “Yes.”

Tony shoved Steve away from himself, recoiling like he had been slapped. Then he slowly turned his head away, back towards the screen where he had just witnessed his own parents die.

Too quickly for Steve to respond, he threw his suited arm out and backhanded Steve across the face, the force of it sending him a few meters through the air before hitting the ground and rolling to a stop.

Bucky’s gun was raised milliseconds later, firing at Tony’s face but the headpiece had already been lowered, the suit impenetrable by bullets, and ready to fight.

Before Steve had even gotten to his feet, Bucky and Tony were across the room, the Iron Man thrusters carrying them across the space. Steve resorted to his shield, throwing the disc and then charging after it to defend his Bucky.

Quickly the blur of battle took over, protecting Bucky becoming a mission that Steve refused to loose. He fought tooth and nail, the shield making contact with the suit again and again, coupled with his fists.

As the fight began to feel more futile, Steve urged Bucky to flee, and he obeyed. Bucky knew Tony wanted his life, not Steve’s; that was safe. Below, he could hear Steve desperately explaining the brainwashing Bucky had endured, that it hadn’t really been him who had committed the murders. Based on the sound of the suit’s thrusters starting up, Iron Man wasn’t convinced. At the last moment, Bucky’s attempt to escape through the missile silo was thwarted, and the three of them fell through the air to the base of the silo, the Siberian wind cutting between the pillars and freezing the sweat upon their skin. As Steve and Tony rolled down the slope, droplets of blood scattered the ground, along with bits of metal from Iron Man.

“This isn’t going to change what happened,” Steve told Tony, a last ditch to save themselves and him from the point of no return.

“I don’t care,” Tony said, voice surprisingly calm. Then after a short pause: “He killed my mom.” The anguish lying within him was all too apparent. Then he launched himself at Steve.

They grappled in a hand-to-hand fight for several moments, Steve at a disadvantage due to his shield lying on the floor within the missile silo, Bucky beside it, stunned from the long fall he had endured. Steve desperately blocked Tony’s hits with his arms, ducking out of the way of the pulsars instead of being able to deflect them with the shield as usual. There was one particular blow—a punch with Iron Man’s weight fully behind it—that connected with Steve’s arm as he tried to block it. The resounding crack and cry from Steve woke Bucky from his stunned state.

Bucky jumped to his feet, sliding down to enter the space in which Steve and Tony fought. Steve was on his knees, his legs having gone weak upon his arm breaking. Tony was readying to deliver a blow, a punch to put Steve down for the count. Before he could, Bucky launched himself from behind, metal arm snagging around the neck of the suit and trying to tear the helmet from Tony’s head. Iron Man activated the thrusters and flew backward, slamming Bucky into the wall. He slumped to the floor, winded from being crushed against the stone. Tony stepped closer, ready to take Bucky out while he was forced to gasp for breath.

At the last moment, Cap’s shield hit Tony on the fly, knocking him away from Bucky. Steve had retrieved his shield from the silo and was now locked in combat with Tony again. This time, Steve was incredibly hindered, right arm simply cradled at his side. Steve tried to protect it but it was jostled all the same as he attempted to block hits and pulsars attacks from Tony with only the shield. He grit his teeth in pain and hurriedly considered his options; there was no way for him to fight back that did not leave himself vulnerable to Tony’s attacks. As Steve desperately thought of a way to disable Tony’s suit without throwing the shield or exposing himself, his defenses slipped and Tony was able to punch him in the gut. Steve went down and Iron Man pursued, not hesitating a moment before delivering punches to Captain America.

Bucky could hear the sound of Steve’s face being beaten and Steve’s gasps as the metal fists connected with his skin. His eyes were focused on the shield however; it had been knocked from Steve’s grasp as he went down and slid to the wall where Bucky had been regaining his breath. The sharp pains in his side alerted him to a possibly broken rib, but it did not stop him from snatching the shield up.

Now, Bucky leapt to his feet, and flung the shield at Tony with his metal arm. Iron Man was knocked to the side and Bucky rushed forwards to attack, digging his fingers into the edges of the reactor in the suit’s chest, attempting to rip it from the wiring within and render the technology unusable. The whir of the suit sounded and suddenly Bucky was thrown back against the wall and pinned by Tony. The metal fist pounded into him, hitting his face twice before he was able to attempt to parry the blows. He was losing however, unable to fight off Tony as his AI analyzed the fight to give Tony the upper hand. Punch after punch landed, finding their way through Bucky’s defenses. Blood poured down his face, sticking his eyelashes together and clouding his vision, hair sticking to his temples. Hits connected with his torso too, bruising his body and knocking the breath from his lungs.

“Buck!” Steve shouted, lifting himself off the floor again, cement sticky with his blood from cuts and cracked skin. “Tony no!” Somehow, he was miraculously on his feet again, one last time.

Steve staggered closer and retrieved the shield from the floor, flinging it at Tony to smash into the plates of the suit along his neck. There was a crackle as wires snapped and technology became damaged. Bucky was able to rip himself from Tony’s grip, crumpling to the floor as he struggled for breath, for life. He watched through a tear streaked face of pain as Tony rounded on Steve, plucking the shield from the suit neck and throwing it behind him, away from either of his current enemies. Steve was completely defenseless, and down one arm.

The punch came faster than Bucky would have expected, his eyes missing the movement and only seeing the way that Steve’s whole body jerked backwards, propelled into one of the cement pillars and slumping to the base of it. Blood was covering his face, a steady stream from his nose and from the splits in his lips. His face would have been unrecognizable had Bucky not known it better than himself.

“Steve,” he coughed weakly, metal arm clawing at the ground as he struggled to regain his strength and move to Steve. “Get up,” he tried to tell him, but the words did not make it past his lips.

Steve’s eyes locked with his, looking away from Tony bearing down on him. “Stay down this time!” Tony yelled, a punch thundering into Steve’s chest. At the last moment, Tony kicked his thrusters into gear, ramming the metal straight at Steve’s heart and Bucky could only watch as Steve’s body caved, ribs shattering, and sternum cracking. Bone was suddenly poking from Steve’s body, a lower rib compounding through his skin. The pain seemed so great that Steve did not make a sound, mouth opening in a silent wail.

But Bucky recognized the gasp of air Steve tried to grab, the way his chest stuttered; one of Steve’s ribs had punctured a lung.

The Winter Soldier had killed people that way. Bucky turned his head to the side and vomited, the bile mixing with the blood pooling on the floor of the Hydra base.

Tony was turning back to Bucky now though, knowing he had left Steve for dead after his final hit. The clunk of his metal feet and the whir of his suit told of his approach and Bucky turned to watch death draw nearer.

As Tony’s leg pulled back, preparing to deliver a kick to Bucky’s torso, Bucky’s eyes flicked to Steve. He was grappling with something at his belt, trying to get a hold of his knife. Bucky understood what was happening; Steve was going to stab himself in an attempt to relieve the pressure in his collapsed lung. There was still a chance.

The kick landed in Bucky’s abdomen and he curled in pain, a low groan escaping from him. The next one was hard enough to move Bucky, to propel his body in a small spin. He saw Steve again, eyes barely able to focus through the screaming pain of his broken body being further beaten. Bucky saw that he could not remove the knife from his belt, his good hand the wrong angle to grasp it and the other unusable. Steve’s eyes had slipped shut, the effort too much. Steve did not yet harbor the stillness of death though. Bucky prayed that he couldn’t hear, that he had passed beyond a place where his senses still knew this moment.

It was in vain however as Steve’s slipping conscious recognized the sound of metal connecting with a body, the thunk of it against muscle. The resounding groan produced felt like a vice on Steve’s heart, to match the one around his nearly-still-chest. Then came a scream, an unimaginable sound of pain. It was the sound of Steve’s nightmares, a sound that announced an end. No one could survive such pain. Steve warred within himself—did he give in to the blackness that surrounded his mind, that fought to pull him under, so as to escape the hell that had somehow become reality? Or did he fight to the surface, try to lift his drowning body, and relieve Bucky of that pain?

Steve fought as the scream sounded again, fainter than before. He was losing Bucky, and all he could do was listen. He fought to open his eyes, but his lungs were drowning, no air entering them. The relief he needed would not come, and his chest tightened more and more the harder he fought to return.

 _Bucky!_ He thought, screamed into the void of his mind. His chest only grew tighter, the sounds of Bucky’s cries fainter, and the pain in his lungs more real. His chest ached, the bones broken beyond even what the serum would be able to repair. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Steve was aware that at least one of his ribs had been a compound break, the bone ripped through the skin of his torso and protruding, the pain signals lancing through his body demanding his awareness of it.

Metal steps reached his ears. They were slow and steady, fading away from Steve’s dying body. Iron Man had left. _Does that mean…_ but no, Steve could not think that, could not comprehend such a fate for Bucky through the pain of his chest, arm, lungs, and the terrible, terrible weight on his mind to simply let go. Steve was fading faster, his awareness of all around him slipping. The thick smell of blood in the air was gone along with his sight now, senses leaving one at a time. His chest was twitching as he ceaselessly tried to draw breath, but to no avail. Steve knew it was over but his body refused to give up that fight.

He gasped tiny breathes, attempts to pull oxygen into his body. Steve knew he could hold his breath longer than the average human; he had tested that fact on the very first day he had wielded this new body. At the time, it had seemed a blessing but now it was a curse. Mercilessly, the universe held onto him longer. He suffered through hypoxia longer, his body able to hold out longer and fight more. Steve somehow believed more in the already cruel fate the universe had for him.

Although Steve’s awareness was slipping, he was still aware of tactile things; the coldness of the cement against him, the sticky warmth of blood on his skin, the hardness of the fingers suddenly gripping his wrist. They were smooth and cold and had little more strength than that of a child, but existed all the same. And then they were gone.

Bucky slipped in the trail of blood and guts he had left across the floor, hand leaving Steve’s for a moment before returning. He refused to let Steve die alone. His body and his mind screamed for him to stop; _Don’t move, don’t worsen it, give up, let go._ But he just tightened his hold on Steve, as much as he could, his metal hand resting where a hole had ripped in Steve’s uniform and a deep cut lay. This close, Bucky could tell that Steve still fought, still attempted to draw breath into lungs that would never work again, his chest fluttering as his body drowned itself.

“It’s okay Stevie,” Bucky told him, the words barely leaving his lips. But he knew Steve would hear. “I’m here.”

Steve heard, and he fought desperately to respond, to let Bucky know it was okay too. But nothing was real, nothing moved, nothing responded. Steve was leaving, he knew it, Bucky did not know. Bucky was going to wait for him and he couldn’t tell him not to, couldn’t tell him it was over. He couldn’t tell Bucky goodbye.

“I’m here with you,” Bucky said feebly, and his thumb rubbed against Steve’s skin soothingly, but neither dying soldier could feel it anymore. “Til the end of the line.”

Bucky could feel the life literally leaking from him with his blood, an alarmingly large river of bodily fluid flowing away from Bucky. Steve’s body held the stiffness of death but Bucky could no longer see it, his head resting on the ground beside Steve, his feeble last breaths puffing against Steve’s thigh. His hand slipped from Steve’s arm, the last noise Bucky was aware of as the metal hit the cement. He could not see, could no longer smell the copper of blood and the salt of sweat and tears, but he was still aware for a moment longer before he, too, departed.

**Author's Note:**

> So if you couldn't tell, I write fic because I love to make myself suffer. It is a divine form of self torture. This was based off my own thoughts of how terrible life would be for either Steve or Bucky to ever outlive the other after everything they've been through. While considering how living on would probably not be an option for the one that lived longer, I thought about the beauty that lay in the idea of a mutual demise, so neither knew the pain of life without the other. Hence, this. Please don't hate me, I already hate myself enough for indulging myself with this piece.


End file.
